Grade Five | ART LESSONS FOR KIDS

I thought this project would be a great opportunity for kids to learn about a wonderful artist called Louise Nevelson and look at recycling with an artistic eye.
After discussing and researching who Lousie Nevelson was the students got into pairs to plan and make a drawing of how they envisioned their final project. They planned the materials they would bring from home and there was excitement in the air to make ‘recycled junk art’.

Every team got a large cardboard piece as their base. The first step was to place all their carboard boxes, bottles, bottle caps and plastic knick knacks in place.

Next step was glueing everything in place. This was messy but a lot of fun. make sure you have PLENTY of GLUE handy and water it down just a little and use your old brushes.

The final step was to spray paint the finished masterpiece. Louise Nevelson was famous for using black or white paint and very ocassionally gold or silver. All the teams names were put into a bag and I randomly chose who would spray paint black ,white ,gold and silver. Make sure one team gets gold and one silver and the rest black and white.

The kids loved spray painting but make sure they are all wearing art smocks, gloves, goggles and masks. This was the best part of the project because all the creations came to life! They named their projects and then went ahead to work on the written part of the assigments which was a research paper on Louise Nevelson.

Don’t these look fantastic?

I found a box full of different sized wooden pieces and let my grade ones go wild! They all picked out between 10-20 pieces and played around with their composition and planning.

They painted a piece of cardboard in either white or black to serve as the background for their shape collage and the students painted all of their wooden pieces with a solid color. When these were dry, they added designs and details with oil pastels– 2-3 colors per shape.

Finally they glued their pieces. Some kept to the original idea they had when the pieces were not painted and others went with a whole different look and feel.

I loved the plain collage and the colored one. As a variation they could be painted in warm or cool colors, complimentary colors, etc. Lovely don’t you think?